1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to comestive drinks which are aqueous based and incorporate a health-benefiting composition.
2. State of the Art
Current health drinks such as Gatoraid®, a trademark of Stokely-Van Camp, Inc., and similar drinks are directed to providing electrolytes and other ingredients, which include caloric-providing compositions as well. The art, however, is devoid of aqueous based drinks, which provide a caloric neutral content while providing excellent hydration.
Currently most bottled water and many beverage manufactures utilize ozonation as a primary means of treating and sanitizing the beverage. Ozone is an excellent choice for this application due to the non-selective oxidizing ability. Other treatments are known in the art including, chlorination, irradiation, ultraviolet light, heat, pH extremes, filtration and others. These treatments all pose a significant challenge to the incorporation of a sensitive ingredient into the aqueous liquid in as much as degradation of a sensitive ingredient, from oxidation or other treatments, would occur. Prior processes therefore lacked the ability to sanitize the liquid and its container while maintaining the integrity of sensitive ingredients such as nutraceuticals.
Manufacturers of bottled beverages have focused on sterilization of the product, for extended shelf life, as a single stage event, where all of the components of the beverage are assembled into an aqueous liquid and treated so as to sterilize the beverage and the container into which it is placed. Because of the unified treatment the method of sterilization must be compatible with all of the individual ingredients and components. This unified treatment results in challenging, and sometimes insurmountable, barriers to the selection of an appropriate primary sterilization agent or method. Thus, current methods do not allow for the suitably sterile introduction of sensitive components into a bottled beverage that retains an acceptable shelf-stability.